The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  “Frank, I congratulate you,” Smith said earnestly. “I hope you will be able to devote that intelligent mind of yours to the problems of this state.”

  Roosevelt responded in kind. The day was significant, he said in beginning his inaugural address, less for the inauguration of a new governor than for the departure of the old. He spoke of Smith’s “wise, efficient, and honorable” administration of the state’s affairs. The new governor handled skillfully the problem of giving Smith credit for past achievements while showing at the same time that great tasks lay ahead. “To secure more of life’s pleasures for the farmer; to guard the toilers in the factories and to insure them a fair wage and protection from the dangers of their trades; to compensate them by adequate insurance for injuries received while working for us; to open the doors of knowledge to their children more widely; to aid those who are crippled and ill; to pursue with strict justice, all evil persons who prey upon their fellow men; and at the same time, by intelligent and helpful sympathy, to lead wrongdoers into right paths—all of these great aims of life are more fully realized here than in any other State in the Union. We have but started on the road, and we have far to go; but during the last six years in particular, the people of this State have shown their impatience of those who seek to make such things a football of politics or by blind, unintelligent obstruction, attempt to bar the road to Progress.…”

  The ceremony symbolized a turning point in the closely entwined careers of the two politicians. Until the fateful election of 1928 their relation had an ordered pattern: Smith was the senior partner, Roosevelt the junior, and each gained political strength in the strengthening of the other. Roosevelt was eight years younger than Smith; if the latter had gone to the White House in 1928, Roosevelt, as governor or perhaps as cabinet member, would have been the likely Democratic nominee eight years later—in 1936, the year Howe had long slated for the capture of the White House.

  As it happened, the political bond between the two men was snapped by the tiny percentage in New York State who voted for Roosevelt but against Smith in 1928. Roosevelt became the kingpin of New York politics, Smith the titular head of the national Democracy but, like all defeated presidential nominees, actually lacking office, authority, and title.

  The new situation bristled with potentialities for misunderstanding. Smith had talked Roosevelt into running and could justifiably feel that Roosevelt owed much to him; Roosevelt could contend, with equal justification, that he had discharged the debt by working hard for the Happy Warrior in the campaign upstate. It was a bitter fact for Smith that many New Yorkers had voted for Roosevelt and against him; but it was a fact, too, that the new governor had jeopardized such support by identifying himself closely with Smith’s cause. Finally, Smith not only wanted to remain active in state governmental affairs but thought that Roosevelt needed—indeed, wanted—his help. He did not realize that Roosevelt felt fully capable of taking over the reins and was eager to strike out on his own.

  Sharpening the situation were the groups around the two men. Smith hoped his department heads would be kept in office by Roosevelt, and the new governor did retain many of them. But the immediate staff was another matter. Belle Moskowitz had served Smith with masterful talent and zeal, but Roosevelt did not keep her on. Nor did he retain Robert Moses, another official close to Smith, as secretary of state; in his place he installed Flynn of the Bronx. Farley took command of the state party; Rosenman became counsel to the governor; Howe looked after his chief’s interests in New York City. One inner circle, intensely devoted, loyal, ambitious for its chief, took the place of another.

  There was no open break between Smith and Roosevelt, only a growing strain and conflict that would come to a head when greater matters were at stake.

  Any doubts about Roosevelt’s ability to bear the burden of the governorship on his own shoulders quickly disappeared. For one thing, the burden was not unduly heavy. Smith had left a well-functioning state government; he had bequeathed no pressing problems calling for dramatic action or all-night conferences. Roosevelt, moreover, was able to handle the job without changing the pattern of his life significantly. Three or four winter months in Albany, April and May in Warm Springs, summer in Albany punctuated by long week ends at Hyde Park and travels inside and outside the state, several more weeks in Warm Springs in the late fall, Christmas at Hyde Park, and then back to Albany—this was the rhythm of the gubernatorial years.

  In all these places Roosevelt lived amid a pleasant whirl of affairs in which political activities seemed to merge gracefully with domestic. His four sons and their friends, back from school or college, filled the air with endless chatter and clatter, whether at the ugly old executive mansion or in Hyde Park. Eleanor Roosevelt, still active in Democratic party and educational affairs, brought a variety of friends and associates to the family meals. Secretaries hurried in and out. Visitors to Hyde Park were struck by the picture—like a Currier and Ives print, Frances Perkins said—of the family sitting on the terrace: Sara Roosevelt reading in her wicker chair, Eleanor knitting, Roosevelt, an unopened book in his lap, looking at the Hudson where it came to view toward the south. Even Sara was drawn into the political orbit, entertaining his political allies and reminding him of the wedding anniversaries and birthdays of old friends.

  Roosevelt moved amiably and deftly among the concentric worlds of politics, family, and statecraft. Ernest K. Lindley, a young reporter close to the official family in Albany, could not forget a scene at the executive mansion:

  “The tea things are taken away.… One of Roosevelt’s secretaries arrives from the Capitol with two brief cases filled with letters dictated earlier in the day. Roosevelt reads and signs the letters, occasionally altering one and putting it aside for retyping. As he does so he answers questions at length. It is St. Valentine’s Day. In the adjoining dining-room, behind drawn curtains, one gathers that the table is being prepared for a dinner for the Governor’s office staff. Louis Howe, the diabolic impresario of such occasions, has been busy all afternoon with cardboard and scissors and paints making a fancifully humorous centerpiece and valentines peculiarly appropriate to each guest. Occasionally a shriek of laughter comes through the curtain. One overhears a voice in the hall reporting that Howe’s masterpiece is an excruciatingly funny valentine for the Governor. Roosevelt looks up for an instant, smiles knowingly, and returns to the dual business of editing his letters and answering questions. Mrs. Roosevelt slips in, hands him a piece of paper with a head pasted on it and whispers that he will have to draw the valentine for Howe. He puts aside his correspondence for a second, swiftly sketches an absurd picture of a man in a long nightgown, holding a candle, and puts on a nightcap for a finishing touch. He puts some caption beneath it which makes them both burst into laughter. Mrs. Roosevelt exits and he returns to his work again. He is finished in a few minutes and ready to go up-stairs to dress for dinner. Just then another visitor arrives, a department head of sober demeanor.

  “ ‘Come along and talk to me up-stairs,’ says the Governor. They start down the hall, conversing very seriously. At the entrance to the dining-room, Roosevelt turns aways for an instant, draws back the curtains, shouts triumphantly, ‘I’ve seen it.’ Shrieks and moans from within are his reply. He turns back to his visitor and, continuing their conversation, they enter the elevator.”

  THE POLITICS OF THE EMPIRE STATE

  The state over which Roosevelt was to preside for four years is a proving ground for national leadership. Six presidents have graduated from its strenuous political life: Van Buren, Fillmore, Arthur, Cleveland, and the two Roosevelts. Other New Yorkers have been presidential candidates of distinction: Greeley, Tilden, Hughes, Smith, Dewey. Still others—men like Root, Stimson, Wagner, Lehman, Harriman, Dulles—have gained national leadership in cabinet and Congress.

  The reasons for this prominence are severalfold. For one thing, New York is a big state—big in population, big in industry, finance, commerce, and agriculture, and, for the East,
big in area. The Empire State has something of the might and majesty of the nation itself. New York City is the financial, commercial, artistic, and intellectual hub of the country and of much of the world. Its polyglot citizenry resembles less a melting pot, one politician has said, than a boiling pot. Stretching to the north alongside three New England states, New York embraces mountain chains, magnificent farm land, and the long valleys dropping down to the St. Lawrence River. The “peninsula” of the state that juts west is a little subculture of its own, with important industrial and transport centers like Buffalo and Rochester, a half-dozen colleges and universities, and strong political traditions.

  To win statewide office in New York, a politician must court a medley of groups that are almost as multifarious as those throughout the nation. Not only does New York City have “more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Rome, more Greeks than Athens,” as its mayors like to boast, but an upstate city like Buffalo has dozens of groups of different national origin. The large Jewish and Catholic minorities are well organized; so are the main economic groups of farmers, workers, and businessmen.

  The struggle for political power in this rich, variegated land has produced a robust two-party system, and the sharp competition between the two parties has prepared local politicians for national leadership. In this century no other state has surpassed New York in thoroughness of party organization or vigor of party leadership. Each party is virtually statewide in scope, based on county committeemen in the great majority of the state’s nine thousand districts. Formally, each party constitutes a pyramid, every layer of which is a cluster of party committees organized for the conquest of elective offices, running from the precinct, ward, and city committees at the base, up through assembly districts to the state party committee at the top. Actually, each party has been led by small but shifting coalitions of state officials and city and rural bosses.

  The party struggle in New York is often pictured in terms of New York City Democrats versus upstate Republicans, but this is an oversimplification. Republicans have run up slim majorities in Queens and Richmond in the city, and heavy majorities in the growing suburbs outside. The Democrats are strong in the industrial belt that cuts across the middle of the state from Troy to Buffalo. To be sure, the political issue of “who gets what, when, and how” sometimes does break down to a clean-cut tug of war between New York City and the rest of the state. With well over half the state’s population, New York City has usually paid about three-quarters of the state’s taxes each year, and has got back little more than half in the form of state aid. The state, moreover, holds sovereign power over the city, which legally is merely its instrument. “New York City,” proclaimed Boss George Washington Plunkitt mournfully, “is pie for the hayseeds.”

  New York City, despite its voting majority, is unable to control the state government because the system of legislative representation in the historic American pattern gives representation to rural areas at the expense of urban. Long ago each of the state’s sixty-two counties (except for two sparsely populated counties) was guaranteed at least one member of the assembly, and the membership of this lower house was fixed “forever” at 150, leaving New York City with a minority. Representation in the Senate was also rigged against the city. Thus the stage was set in New York for the classic tug of war between governor and lawmakers. The New York legislature has been called “Republican by constitutional law”; the Democrats have carried both houses only twice in this century, while they have won the governorship twelve times. A Democratic governor elected by an urban-based majority must deal with a senate and assembly responsive to pressures from rural areas and small towns.

  All these factors were present in 1929 when Roosevelt took office. Elected mainly by city voters, he confronted a Republican legislature. Pledged to face up to some of the looming problems of industrialism and urbanism, he had to deal with men representing areas far removed from the tensions of modern life. Given Roosevelt’s temperament and the power and pride of the legislators, it was doubtless inevitable that the two forces would soon collide.

  He hoped, Roosevelt had said in his inaugural address, that his administration would mark an “Era of Good Feeling.” He pledged that he would not let state business become involved in partisan politics and that he would not claim undue credit for accomplishing things on which he and the legislators agreed. This pledge was only a gesture. Roosevelt had written to Mrs. William Jennings Bryan less than two weeks before: “Eleanor and I are getting ready for a strenuous two years. I expect to be the target of practically all of the Republican artillery, but, as you know, I am a little like my dear friend, Mr. Bryan, in liking a good fight.” Government business is inseparable from politics, and politicians win votes by taking credit for the things voters like and disclaiming responsibility for things they do not like. Smith had made great political capital by appealing over the heads of balky Republican legislators to the voters.

  Given the conditions dividing Roosevelt and lawmakers, the era of good feeling could not last long, and it did not. It collapsed suddenly in April 1929 in a sharp quarrel over the power of governor and legislature to control the budget.

  The exact issue was complex. After years of agitation the people of New York through a constitutional amendment had adopted the so-called “executive budget,” intended to center immediate decision-making on the details of spending in the governor while keeping general control in the senate and assembly. The legislature could uphold or strike out the governor’s items, but it could not add new items without his approval. Both Roosevelt and the Republican leaders flouted the new procedure. The governor’s budget was not clearly itemized, and when the legislators brought the revised budget out of committee, it did not show just what items had been changed. Moreover—and this was especially galling to Roosevelt—the legislators ruled that itemization of certain lump sums had to be approved by the chairmen—Republicans, of course—of the two house committees as well as by the governor.

  Behind the cloak of legal technicalities was the scuffle of politicians. The executive budget aimed to free the legislature of budgetary detail—but it was precisely in the details that politicians were interested. Legislators had debts to those who helped them gain office, debts that could be paid off in the currency of state contracts, jobs, purchases, and the like. Every legislator had a particular stake in state spending in his own district. Budget-making in the legislature inevitably became a game of logrolling, umpired by the two finance chairmen who, through their power to itemize, bolstered their legislative leadership by judicious awarding and withholding of budgetary favors to the rank and file of Republican legislators.

  Each side assumed a lofty posture of constitutional righteousness. “I raise the broad question,” Roosevelt said, “affecting the division of governmental duties between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of the government.” The legislators retorted that “the rights of the people must be preserved from the arrogance and presumption of an overzealous executive.” Roosevelt seemed to enjoy the fight. “I am in one continuous glorious fight with the Republican legislative leaders,” he wrote a friend happily.

  When the legislature handed him the amended budget the governor pondered for two weeks and then vetoed the whole $56,000,000 bill. He admitted that this was drastic action, but, he said, “Either the State must carry out the principles of the Executive Budget, which embody fifteen years of effort to place the affairs of the State on a modern efficient business basis, or we shall drift into a hopeless situation of divided responsibility for administration of executive functions.” Roosevelt resubmitted the bill in the same form as his first budget. The Republicans made the same changes and promptly adjourned. They were fortified in their position by a legal opinion from the attorney general, a Republican who by an election quirk had won office in 1928 and who now, of course, was siding with his fellow partisans in the legislature.

  What could Roosevelt do now? His advisers were divided. Some felt
that he had demanded a too rigid construction of the executive budget amendment, that he should now retire gracefully by signing the law, or call the legislature into what all knew would be a futile special session. Others held that he had a sound legal position and that he should submit the question to the courts. Roosevelt decided on the latter step. The Republicans chose as counsel none other than former Governor Nathan L. Miller, a Republican who had never been troubled by having to share power with the two finance chairmen, since, as Roosevelt commented privately, “the group of three constituted a little family tea party which Miller was able to dominate.” In June 1929 a decision of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court sustained the legislature’s position, but several months later the Court of Appeals upheld the governor’s case on the major points.

  Roosevelt had won the fight, but in a curiously un-Rooseveltian way. He had appealed to the courts rather than to the people, perhaps out of a conviction that the issues were too technical for popular understanding or arousal. The position he had taken both in public and private—that he was fighting for “Constitutional Government, carrying out the original American theory of separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches”—was a remarkable stand for a politician who in Albany and later in Washington would try to bypass some of the ancient barriers between the three branches of government.

  In any event, the budget fight was only a skirmish in a larger political battle that Roosevelt was not to win.

  THE ANATOMY OF STALEMATE